1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for acquiring information specific to equipment by an image pickup element and performing remote control of desired equipment based on the acquired information specific to the equipment. In particular, the present invention relates to a technique for performing remote control of picture delivery equipment such as a TV camera.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been a technique for acquiring position information from a taken scenery image and acquiring information related to the position. Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 2003-330953, No. 2003-323440 and No. 2002-247045 relate to such a technique.
Recently, various techniques for instinctively understandably controlling desired equipment with a single controller have been developed. For example, according to “Proposal of ‘OPTO-NAVI’ System, which is an information-appliance multi-purpose remote controller using a low power consumption ID-receiving CMOS image sensor having a function of reading a partial area at a high speed” (The Journal of the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers Vol. 59, No. 12, pp. 1830-1840 (2005)) (hereinafter referred as “non-patent document”), a custom image sensor mounted on a mobile phone is used to receive an ID from equipment while a normal image is taken in real time. The received ID is displayed being superimposed on the taken background image. The user can perform an operation while visually confirming the target equipment and the ID on the display.